RTF Summary. KDawson was only one of a dozen or more slashdotters who submitted the story. I've submitted stories before that never ended up on/. and some that ended up being submitted by others with different summaries. I was also surprised that it took this long for the story to show up on/. since it was on the digg front page yesterday and lots of other blogs before then.
RTFA. His friends were warning him that his plane could be sabotaged, and he'd already cancelled some flights for fear that this might happen. He DID know too much, and had access to the missing emails that Rove desparately wanted to remain lost forever. And Connell is likely one of the only IT staff with the knowledge and ability to recover that mailstore. Not saying that this couldn't possibly be an accident, just that it's pretty damned suspicious, that's all.
Re:slashdot's moderation system is seriously BROKE
on
Zoe's Tale
·
· Score: 1
If I had any mod points left, I'd use them here, but I don'g.
Sorry I haven't gotten around to this earlier. I'll fire off your invite tonite. I think you'll be very happy with this, and will want to contribute to the development of the platform.
She works for the Austin Independent School District. It's an all union shop. She can't work there unless she's a dues-paying member of the Teacher's Union. As a close friend of several high school teachers (one of whom is the computer science teacher) and as father-in-law to a student teacher, I can confirm that there is no conspiracy theory here. It is fact, not theory. The union has a great deal of influence in what schools do with their curriculum, even down to software choices. Our high school, however, is a 100% Macintosh shop, since Apple offered irresistable incentives to cash-strapped school districts to get them to purchase Macintosh educational computers and software at a steep discount over Microsoft's program. It was a very smart move. Both of my sons are now in college, and they both have Macs. They turn up their nose at my Vista machine, but my youngest son now seems enchanted with my Ubuntu 8.04 media center desktop.
Well, speaking as an MCSE myself (and a CNE, MCDBA, MCTS), I will forgive your insult, because there are plenty of paper MCSEs running around, but they usually don't end up working in positions of responsibility. These kind can be weeded out pretty easily.
I had a similar experience working with an M.D., who asked me to help her with a computer problem (Windows, of course). She couldn't quite figure out an error message she was getting, and when I called up a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that explained it, she became a bit incensed, insisting that she had also earned a degree in Computer Science, and she'd never heard of such a ridiculously stupid software problem occuring on something as sophisticated as WindowsXP, so there must be some other explanation.
Just because she had some kind of CS degree, she didn't think Windows should give her any kind of trouble, but that error just wouldn't go away until I used regedit to tweak her registry in accordance with the KB recommendation.
Just go to Paul Venezia's blog at Infoworld.com http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/ and read his series on the prosecution of San Francisco Network Admin Terry Childs, who has been in jail since last July simply for doing his job too well. His own supervisors who accused him of hijacking the network didn't even know that his job was to secure the infrastructure against ingnoramuses like themselves. This tragic story is one of the worst examples of governments hiring "computer experts" who are nothing more than political hacks who aren't qualified to run any distro of Linux, let alone configure root access to Cisco switches.
Can I move to your county? My county puts all property taxes on a single bill, so I cannot opt out of paying for any of them without risking arrest, jail, and loss of my home.
Yes, tax protesters are routinely arrested and sent to prison. If you doubt this truth, talk to Irwin Schiff (Peter Schiff's father) or Wesley Snipes (Blade).
As the other posters have explained, you can use Silverlight in FF, but if you want to have a less Microsofty experience with Netflix, you can install the IETab extension and then Netflix Watch It Now works just fine in Firefox. Of course, it's not entirey Microsoft-free since this only works on a Windows OS. I'm still waiting for Netflix to develop a player that works in Linux, but I'm not holding my breath.
Boxee is still in Alpha right now and is quite a way off from even going into Beta. The last update added a new skin to the interface, but now video no longer plays consistently in fullscreen on my Ubuntu 8.04 box, and Boxee doesn't even install on Ubuntu 8.10. Don't get me wrong, I love the project and am very excited about contributing to the development of it, but it is not yet ready for prime time. The potential is amazing, as even in Alpha, it blows away just about every other media center platform I've used (including Windows Media Center on Vista).
Just go to the boxee.tv site and request an invite. You'll be put on a waitlist, but you'll get a response. It may take you a while, but I got an invite only 2 weeks after I requested one. You can also register on the boxee forums and get technical information about the project, and I note a lot of people posting there are begging for invites. Anyone already in the Alpha test can invite their friends, which is part of the charm of the platform. Social networking is what sets Boxee apart from lots of other media center packages. Once you log into Boxee, you can see what your friends have been watching, and they can see your activity, recommend movies, TV shows, music, and all you have to do is click on the selection to launch it. If you reply to me here with a valid email address, I'll be happy to send you one, since the project gets even more interesting the more friends you have in the network. You can use a free throwaway account like Hotmail or Yahoo if you like. I need more Boxee friends!
Sad, but true. I'm a Boxee Alpha tester and as soon as I saw the announcement on CNET, I tried to update my Boxee install to get Neflix working, but no such luck. Checking the Boxee forums, I found that they can't technically do it just yet, so you have to have Boxee running on the MacOS version to get it working. I'm also a bit disappointed that I have to boot into my Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit version to run Boxee, as there is no support yet for Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit Intrepid Ibex. There are posts on the forums from some brave souls who have been able to install the Hardy packages on 8.10, but apparently only with the 32-bit version. Since I installed the 64-bit version of 8.10 on my Athlon64 system as soon as it came out, I haven't been able to do much with it, and Boxee is one of my favorite time-wasters. Trouble is, most of my time wasted with Boxee over the past week or two was trying to get it working on 8.10. Sometimes, I wish I were a developer with the coding sk1llz to contribute to this project. As it is, I guess I'm just a bug tester/reporter. But that is at least a contribution. Boxee is an absolutely awesome Media Center.
Not entirely true. I stream Netflix Watch Instantly selections in Firefox by using the IETab extension (it fools the server into thinking that you're using IE instead of FF). It works in Opera, too. Alas, only on Windows, though, not Linux.
Yes, if you read the Wikipedia entry on Zimmer, you'll learn that he was the "angel investor" who helped bankroll the Proposition 215 effort in California that legalized medical marijuana back in 1996. He watched his mother die of cancer, and discovered how much marijuana helped her deal with the agony of her illness and cope with the side effects of chemotherapy. And as a recovering alcoholic himself, he's painfully aware of the consequences of addiction, and realized early on that marijuana was not addictive. He is now an ardent supporter of medical marijuana and strongly opposes the DEA's heavy-handed S.W.A.T. raids on patient collectives and medical marijuana clubs in California.
Since I haven't yet RTFA, I can't comment with any authority (as if I ever do), but if it's a javascript exploit, then I suppose it could affect any platform. My credit union's online banking portal only allows me to use Internet Explorer, so I can't even get to my bank account through Firefox or Opera or SWIron (which I prefer to Chrome). Oh the irony! Here's one instance where IE is a safer alternative to FF!
That's odd. I've always heard Mossberg referred to as the Wall Street Journal's resident Macintosh Fanboy. He normally praises all things Apple and disses all things Redmond. Paul Thurrott of Windows IT Pro Magazine routinely rips him apart for his columns where he clearly doesn't understand what he's talking about. If you listen to his Windows Weekly podcast, you'll hear him fuming about something Mossberg has written that demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of Windows architecture, technology and history. In the very first paragraph of a recent Mossberg column, Thurrott pointed out no fewer than eight completely false statements about Windows Vista that suggested Mossberg had never even done the most rudimentary level of research to back up his assertions.
Yes, Mossberg is a tool, but one that commands a great deal of undeserved respect from millions of clueless WSJ readers (and business decision-makers).
Um, they did. You can modify the theme of Vista to mimic XP if you really want to do so, just as you could modify the themes in XP to mimic "Classic" Windows 2000. The problem is that you have to RTFM, something few Windows users wish to do. Illiterate? Write for help!
See also Thurrott/Livingston "Windows Vista Secrets" 1st Edition, page 134, Table 5-3, Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2007.
If I had any mod points right now, I'd put INSIGHTFUL on every one of your posts in this thread. You're dead on about Vista and its security model, which does indeed prevent most WinXP/2K malware from executing on new systems, even those of clueless noobs who want to click the OK button on everything that pops up. At least in an enterprise environment, the end users do not have the ability to screw up their systems by running apps with elevated permissions.
The real problem is home users. True security rests in the hands of the end user, and no amount of kernel tweaking is going to prevent someone from thoughtlessly authenticating a process called by a malware app if they've disabled UAC or they type in the Admin password without thinking through the ramifications of their actions.
Weird, but I've never seen a Blue Screen of Death on a Vista system. That's one nightmare from the XP days that I don't miss at all. I suppose it is possible that it could happen to me (knock wood it doesn't), but I've been using Vista since the third Longhorn Beta/CTP release, and I have never had a single BSOD. I've rolled out more than a dozen Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate editions over the past two years with no significant problems at all, save some driver issues that were resolved with SP1.
Yeah, I have two different clients who bought new Dell Vostro business computers (the cheapest of the cheap), and configured them online with Vista Home Basic, thinking they were saving money. They were a bit annoyed when I explained that they wouldn't be able to join their Small Business Server domains with that client OS. One of them paid Dell another $99 for an XP Pro license that solved his problem and the other chose to do an upgrade to Vista Business Edition. Both of them are working fine now, and the Vista user is much happier with his system than the XP user.
I have a DVD copy of a Discovery Channel documentary about the ISS, produced in 2000. Prominently featured in the program is astrophysicist Neil DeGrassi Tyson, talking about all the great work that will be done up there when construction of the ISS is completed... in 2006. The final segment of the program details progress on designing the Crew Recovery Vehicle that was to be used to replace the aging Soyuz in 2005 as the "Lifeboat" to return astronauts to earth in the event they had to abandon the ISS. That was cancelled sometime after the Columbia Shuttle disaster. All of the CGI graphics in the program showing the final completed space station bear little resemblence to the 10 year old ISS we can see in photographs and videos on NASA's website today, suggesting that construction of the project is probably no more than halfway complete. All massive government projects tend to fall significantly behind schedule, and none of them ever come in as budgeted, sometimes balooning to two or even three times the cost that was allocated. The Space Station is no different, and perhaps because of its ambitious promises that were used to sell the project to the congress, is just that much more of a disappointment.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to go up there to visit as a tourist like Simonyi, Ansari, Garriott or Shuttleworth. If I had the money, that would be my dream vacation. The experiences of these visionaries confirms the validity of space tourism as a viable industry. Perhaps NASA should stop trying to sell the ISS as a scientific project (a mission that has demonstrated very disappointing results) and promote the place for the awe and majesty of the experience the astronauts enjoy.
Uh, you don't have to hack any websites to get information about political donors. It'a all public knowledge. The candidates are required by law to report that kind of stuff. This was required even before McCain-Feingold fucked up our political system even further with their Campaign Finance Reform Bill. If they don't file these reports, or file them late, they have to pay significant fines.
Go to the Federal Election Commission's website and review all the campaign finance reports they've filed regularly since they declared their candidacy. For an easier view of the data, you can also go to http://www.campaignmoney.com/ and search on your own zip code to see how much money all your neighbors contributed to the last campaign.
RTF Summary. KDawson was only one of a dozen or more slashdotters who submitted the story. I've submitted stories before that never ended up on /. and some that ended up being submitted by others with different summaries. I was also surprised that it took this long for the story to show up on /. since it was on the digg front page yesterday and lots of other blogs before then.
RTFA. His friends were warning him that his plane could be sabotaged, and he'd already cancelled some flights for fear that this might happen. He DID know too much, and had access to the missing emails that Rove desparately wanted to remain lost forever. And Connell is likely one of the only IT staff with the knowledge and ability to recover that mailstore. Not saying that this couldn't possibly be an accident, just that it's pretty damned suspicious, that's all.
If I had any mod points left, I'd use them here, but I don'g.
Sorry I haven't gotten around to this earlier. I'll fire off your invite tonite. I think you'll be very happy with this, and will want to contribute to the development of the platform.
She works for the Austin Independent School District. It's an all union shop. She can't work there unless she's a dues-paying member of the Teacher's Union. As a close friend of several high school teachers (one of whom is the computer science teacher) and as father-in-law to a student teacher, I can confirm that there is no conspiracy theory here. It is fact, not theory. The union has a great deal of influence in what schools do with their curriculum, even down to software choices. Our high school, however, is a 100% Macintosh shop, since Apple offered irresistable incentives to cash-strapped school districts to get them to purchase Macintosh educational computers and software at a steep discount over Microsoft's program. It was a very smart move. Both of my sons are now in college, and they both have Macs. They turn up their nose at my Vista machine, but my youngest son now seems enchanted with my Ubuntu 8.04 media center desktop.
Well, speaking as an MCSE myself (and a CNE, MCDBA, MCTS), I will forgive your insult, because there are plenty of paper MCSEs running around, but they usually don't end up working in positions of responsibility. These kind can be weeded out pretty easily.
I had a similar experience working with an M.D., who asked me to help her with a computer problem (Windows, of course). She couldn't quite figure out an error message she was getting, and when I called up a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that explained it, she became a bit incensed, insisting that she had also earned a degree in Computer Science, and she'd never heard of such a ridiculously stupid software problem occuring on something as sophisticated as WindowsXP, so there must be some other explanation.
Just because she had some kind of CS degree, she didn't think Windows should give her any kind of trouble, but that error just wouldn't go away until I used regedit to tweak her registry in accordance with the KB recommendation.
Just go to Paul Venezia's blog at Infoworld.com http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/ and read his series on the prosecution of San Francisco Network Admin Terry Childs, who has been in jail since last July simply for doing his job too well. His own supervisors who accused him of hijacking the network didn't even know that his job was to secure the infrastructure against ingnoramuses like themselves. This tragic story is one of the worst examples of governments hiring "computer experts" who are nothing more than political hacks who aren't qualified to run any distro of Linux, let alone configure root access to Cisco switches.
Can I move to your county? My county puts all property taxes on a single bill, so I cannot opt out of paying for any of them without risking arrest, jail, and loss of my home.
Yes, tax protesters are routinely arrested and sent to prison. If you doubt this truth, talk to Irwin Schiff (Peter Schiff's father) or Wesley Snipes (Blade).
As the other posters have explained, you can use Silverlight in FF, but if you want to have a less Microsofty experience with Netflix, you can install the IETab extension and then Netflix Watch It Now works just fine in Firefox. Of course, it's not entirey Microsoft-free since this only works on a Windows OS. I'm still waiting for Netflix to develop a player that works in Linux, but I'm not holding my breath.
Boxee is still in Alpha right now and is quite a way off from even going into Beta. The last update added a new skin to the interface, but now video no longer plays consistently in fullscreen on my Ubuntu 8.04 box, and Boxee doesn't even install on Ubuntu 8.10. Don't get me wrong, I love the project and am very excited about contributing to the development of it, but it is not yet ready for prime time. The potential is amazing, as even in Alpha, it blows away just about every other media center platform I've used (including Windows Media Center on Vista).
Just go to the boxee.tv site and request an invite. You'll be put on a waitlist, but you'll get a response. It may take you a while, but I got an invite only 2 weeks after I requested one. You can also register on the boxee forums and get technical information about the project, and I note a lot of people posting there are begging for invites. Anyone already in the Alpha test can invite their friends, which is part of the charm of the platform. Social networking is what sets Boxee apart from lots of other media center packages. Once you log into Boxee, you can see what your friends have been watching, and they can see your activity, recommend movies, TV shows, music, and all you have to do is click on the selection to launch it. If you reply to me here with a valid email address, I'll be happy to send you one, since the project gets even more interesting the more friends you have in the network. You can use a free throwaway account like Hotmail or Yahoo if you like. I need more Boxee friends!
Sad, but true. I'm a Boxee Alpha tester and as soon as I saw the announcement on CNET, I tried to update my Boxee install to get Neflix working, but no such luck. Checking the Boxee forums, I found that they can't technically do it just yet, so you have to have Boxee running on the MacOS version to get it working. I'm also a bit disappointed that I have to boot into my Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit version to run Boxee, as there is no support yet for Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit Intrepid Ibex. There are posts on the forums from some brave souls who have been able to install the Hardy packages on 8.10, but apparently only with the 32-bit version. Since I installed the 64-bit version of 8.10 on my Athlon64 system as soon as it came out, I haven't been able to do much with it, and Boxee is one of my favorite time-wasters. Trouble is, most of my time wasted with Boxee over the past week or two was trying to get it working on 8.10. Sometimes, I wish I were a developer with the coding sk1llz to contribute to this project. As it is, I guess I'm just a bug tester/reporter. But that is at least a contribution. Boxee is an absolutely awesome Media Center.
Not entirely true. I stream Netflix Watch Instantly selections in Firefox by using the IETab extension (it fools the server into thinking that you're using IE instead of FF). It works in Opera, too. Alas, only on Windows, though, not Linux.
[Citation needed]
No wonder you post anonymously. I work in the public health field and our epidemiology numbers don't support your assertion.
Yes, if you read the Wikipedia entry on Zimmer, you'll learn that he was the "angel investor" who helped bankroll the Proposition 215 effort in California that legalized medical marijuana back in 1996. He watched his mother die of cancer, and discovered how much marijuana helped her deal with the agony of her illness and cope with the side effects of chemotherapy. And as a recovering alcoholic himself, he's painfully aware of the consequences of addiction, and realized early on that marijuana was not addictive. He is now an ardent supporter of medical marijuana and strongly opposes the DEA's heavy-handed S.W.A.T. raids on patient collectives and medical marijuana clubs in California.
Since I haven't yet RTFA, I can't comment with any authority (as if I ever do), but if it's a javascript exploit, then I suppose it could affect any platform. My credit union's online banking portal only allows me to use Internet Explorer, so I can't even get to my bank account through Firefox or Opera or SWIron (which I prefer to Chrome). Oh the irony! Here's one instance where IE is a safer alternative to FF!
That's odd. I've always heard Mossberg referred to as the Wall Street Journal's resident Macintosh Fanboy. He normally praises all things Apple and disses all things Redmond. Paul Thurrott of Windows IT Pro Magazine routinely rips him apart for his columns where he clearly doesn't understand what he's talking about. If you listen to his Windows Weekly podcast, you'll hear him fuming about something Mossberg has written that demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of Windows architecture, technology and history. In the very first paragraph of a recent Mossberg column, Thurrott pointed out no fewer than eight completely false statements about Windows Vista that suggested Mossberg had never even done the most rudimentary level of research to back up his assertions.
Yes, Mossberg is a tool, but one that commands a great deal of undeserved respect from millions of clueless WSJ readers (and business decision-makers).
If you want to use a computer for high-end audio or video work, spend the extra money on a Mac.
Um, they did. You can modify the theme of Vista to mimic XP if you really want to do so, just as you could modify the themes in XP to mimic "Classic" Windows 2000. The problem is that you have to RTFM, something few Windows users wish to do. Illiterate? Write for help!
See also Thurrott/Livingston "Windows Vista Secrets" 1st Edition, page 134, Table 5-3, Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2007.
If I had any mod points right now, I'd put INSIGHTFUL on every one of your posts in this thread. You're dead on about Vista and its security model, which does indeed prevent most WinXP/2K malware from executing on new systems, even those of clueless noobs who want to click the OK button on everything that pops up. At least in an enterprise environment, the end users do not have the ability to screw up their systems by running apps with elevated permissions.
The real problem is home users. True security rests in the hands of the end user, and no amount of kernel tweaking is going to prevent someone from thoughtlessly authenticating a process called by a malware app if they've disabled UAC or they type in the Admin password without thinking through the ramifications of their actions.
Weird, but I've never seen a Blue Screen of Death on a Vista system. That's one nightmare from the XP days that I don't miss at all. I suppose it is possible that it could happen to me (knock wood it doesn't), but I've been using Vista since the third Longhorn Beta/CTP release, and I have never had a single BSOD. I've rolled out more than a dozen Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate editions over the past two years with no significant problems at all, save some driver issues that were resolved with SP1.
Yeah, I have two different clients who bought new Dell Vostro business computers (the cheapest of the cheap), and configured them online with Vista Home Basic, thinking they were saving money. They were a bit annoyed when I explained that they wouldn't be able to join their Small Business Server domains with that client OS. One of them paid Dell another $99 for an XP Pro license that solved his problem and the other chose to do an upgrade to Vista Business Edition. Both of them are working fine now, and the Vista user is much happier with his system than the XP user.
I have a DVD copy of a Discovery Channel documentary about the ISS, produced in 2000. Prominently featured in the program is astrophysicist Neil DeGrassi Tyson, talking about all the great work that will be done up there when construction of the ISS is completed ... in 2006. The final segment of the program details progress on designing the Crew Recovery Vehicle that was to be used to replace the aging Soyuz in 2005 as the "Lifeboat" to return astronauts to earth in the event they had to abandon the ISS. That was cancelled sometime after the Columbia Shuttle disaster. All of the CGI graphics in the program showing the final completed space station bear little resemblence to the 10 year old ISS we can see in photographs and videos on NASA's website today, suggesting that construction of the project is probably no more than halfway complete. All massive government projects tend to fall significantly behind schedule, and none of them ever come in as budgeted, sometimes balooning to two or even three times the cost that was allocated. The Space Station is no different, and perhaps because of its ambitious promises that were used to sell the project to the congress, is just that much more of a disappointment.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to go up there to visit as a tourist like Simonyi, Ansari, Garriott or Shuttleworth. If I had the money, that would be my dream vacation. The experiences of these visionaries confirms the validity of space tourism as a viable industry. Perhaps NASA should stop trying to sell the ISS as a scientific project (a mission that has demonstrated very disappointing results) and promote the place for the awe and majesty of the experience the astronauts enjoy.
You can also use something like a Launch Loop (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop, http://www.launchloop.com/ and http://www.keithl.com/), so the answer to your question "How fast should a streamlined package need to go if you fire it up that way?" is 14 Kilometers per second.
Uh, you don't have to hack any websites to get information about political donors. It'a all public knowledge. The candidates are required by law to report that kind of stuff. This was required even before McCain-Feingold fucked up our political system even further with their Campaign Finance Reform Bill. If they don't file these reports, or file them late, they have to pay significant fines.
Go to the Federal Election Commission's website and review all the campaign finance reports they've filed regularly since they declared their candidacy. For an easier view of the data, you can also go to http://www.campaignmoney.com/ and search on your own zip code to see how much money all your neighbors contributed to the last campaign.
No hacking required.